They do that regardless of whether there are fares. In my neck of the woods, the suburbanites have fought like hell against installing light rail to connect downtown with the greater metro area because they’re worried about the “crime train”. Who cares if it would improve commuting for the majority of the population?
Statements like that are why I tend to follow the idea that any government service should be provided to every citizen equally without exception.
We spend so much money in the US trying to make sure only the “correct” people are receiving things like welfare or Medicaid. If we just dropped the restrictions we’d likely be fairly close to being able to afford covering everybody with those programs.
This is exactly what Luxembourg did with their public transit recently. They realized they were spending more in upkeep/salaries/HR/computer systems/policy/etc, and just ripped it all out, and made it free.
That’s the reasoning behind an Universal Basic Income system: deciding who needs financial aid and who doesn’t, is more expensive than just giving everyone a fixed monthly payment and calling it a day.
That is, except for those who think nobody should get anything for free, and are trying to rip out the aid systems altogether.
Defecto “free” ridership has really hurt the local public transport system in the SF Bay Area.
Quite a lot of people refuse to take public transit due to risks of being harassed or witnessing open drug use. Easy to dismiss that as a guy personally, but I definitely think that creates an environment that’s hostile to many people who need to use or would otherwise be using public transit.
On the other hand, Margerite bus at Stanford has been free for decades, and it’s never been a significant issue there.
So it’s very difficult to generalize across different systems that have their own unique issues.
We have free transit in Albuquerque. It’s basically turned into a rolling homeless shelter. They hired security to manage it. My dad was one of those. He was attacked by someone using drugs on the bus and had the back of his hand bit off in a brutal attack. The busses here are VERY dangerous and I’d never step foot on one again.
I ride the Albuquerque buses to and from work. The worst I’ve seen is an intoxicated guy being thrown off by the driver. I’ve also seen a couple people kicked off for riding a full route, which I guess is how they keep people from riding all day. For reference, I’m a smallish woman, usually carrying a messenger bag. I’ve never been bothered.
What happened to @Dandylion’s dad is horrifying, though. That is exactly the kind of stuff that keeps me off public transit as well. “It never happened to me” isn’t really a valid argument.
I was thinking more like that solving the homelessness problem needs to be a part of improving public transit, and cities in general. Nothing made me want a personal vehicle more than being forced to ride public transit. Every day I’d look at the people passing us by in cars and say to myself “One day, that is gonna be me!”
It’s true that you’ll probably see something unpleasant on public transit once in a while but most folks aren’t going to share the experience of someone who is literally tasked with engaging with and managing the people causing problems on the bus.
It’s unfortunate though because in my experience transit feels a lot more pleasant when there are at least a decent amount of people riding with you. When people start to feel unsafe and stop riding, it can drive further people away if they have other transportation options.
Eeh? I’m a woman, I don’t have this problem on transit at all, either in Chicagoland or in SF. First of all, witnessing open drug use isn’t, like, the end of the world; it might make you uncomfortable, but it’s not dangerous.
Being harassed is a real fear, but I find that I’m more often harassed while I’m just walking around than in a bus, train, or the muni, and when I’m on board transit there are cameras and an operator to potentially step in!
Public transit is a public good. If seeing poor people and drug users makes us uncomfortable, the solution is to address the root causes of poverty and addiction, not to force poor people off of public transit.
You might not, and neither do I have a problem with it. I grew up low income and rode plenty of “sketchy” bus lines where fights would break out. I know when to remove yourself from danger.
Plenty of people I know have, or at least have that perception. My S/Os parents visited from out of the country, and they were harassed by someone screaming racist epithets at them and got scared, and ended up taking Uber the rest of the time they were here. They are old, retired, and we didn’t want to risk them getting uncomfortable. Obviously we have the privilege of doing that, but not everyone does.
Again, it’s not about being poor, it’s about antisocial behavior that destroys the public spaces. That goes for rich assholes too.
I live in Tacoma, Washington, and we also just put into effect that no one under 18 needs to pay for public transit. It’s entirely free with a special Orca card. It seems like the whole state is on the path to making it free for everyone some day.
TransitCenter, a transit advocacy group, found in a 2018 survey of riders with household incomes below $35,000 in eight major cities that frequency, safety, crowding and reliability were higher priorities than bus fare.
Maybe I’m missing something, but if they’re surveying people who are already riders, then OF COURSE fare isn’t their biggest complaint. They’re not getting feedback from people who want to use public transit, but can’t afford to.
The information gathered from this survey is still valuable, but shouldn’t be used as an argument for or against free public transit.
Now California needs to make a law that any books that have a sexual content rating cannot be sold to public schools. Vendors can then choose between which state they want to sell.
cnn.com
Hot